


No, Happy Birthday to YOU

by veroreos



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Birthday, Fluff, Gen, I'm still laughing that I wrote this, Passive-aggressive wars over dumb things, Self-Insert, Swearing, cardboard cutout of Seto Kaiba
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-25
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veroreos/pseuds/veroreos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What started out as sending a birthday card out of courtesy spirals out of control over the course of a few years. Your birthday got a lot more exciting thanks to a certain asshole millionaire that couldn't sign a damn card.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No, Happy Birthday to YOU

**Author's Note:**

> Written by request as a belated birthday present for my dear friend Sarah! I hope she enjoys!! <3

You got him a card for his 16th birthday.

Seto Kaiba was just a classmate, and you didn't even speak that much, but hey, you're a courteous person, and he was never mean to you or anything. The card was a simple little thing bought from a convenience store with some generic nice things scrawled on the inside, and and you signed your name with a polite little heart. He was rich so anything you bought as a gift wouldn't really be enough, but hey, hopefully he would like the card.

He got you a card for your 16th birthday.

It was the most depressingly generic thing you had ever seen in your life, with his signature _printed_ on the inside. Kaiba hadn't even bothered signing it himself. If you had to guess, you'd figure that he put you on some kind of “ _this person bought me a card I better send one back solely for the sake of proper manners_ ” list. What a prick. Sure, your card wasn't exactly anything to write home about, but hey, at least you wrote things inside of it yourself, and signed your own damn name by hand!

You made him a card for his 17th birthday.

A store card would have looked nicer, perhaps, but maybe if you showed him what a heartfelt card looked like he'd appreciate what you did for him a little more. You sloppily drew Blue Eyes White Dragon as best you could on the cover, with a big “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” plastered around it before writing a very long, passive aggressive message on the inside, thanking him for the embarrassment of a card he sent you (though you phrased it more politely) and wishing him the best birthday anyone could ever hope for. You attached a giftcard to his own theme park and this time, when you signed your name, you put three hearts. That'd show him.

He sent you a life-sized cardboard standup of himself with a card for your 17th birthday.

The deliveryman was one of Kaiba's bodyguards, and he had to awkwardly carry the cutout of his boss under his arm. When you opened the door he walked in and propped it up in your living room, leaving you horribly confused until you realized the the cardboard Kaiba was holding a birthday card in its hand. The card itself was just as plain and generic as it had been last year, except for the hastily (angrily?) scribbled signature on the inside, accompanied with a giftcard roughly four times the amount of what you had given him for his birthday. You grinned knowing you had bothered him, but when you turned and met the piercing gaze of his cardboard imitation, you were filled with indignity again.

It took you a month to make, but you made a paper-mache scale-model of a Blue Eyes White Dragon for his 18th birthday.

This time you bought a card because you'd pretty much used all the paper you could find on making the dumb dragon, but you wrote as many cliche mushy things you could think of all over the inside and signed your name with as many hearts as you could put around it. You included a cheap giftcard to a fast food chain nearby and stuck both cards in the mouth of the dragon, before bundling it in bubble wrap and putting in in a box marked “fragile” and mailing it.

He showed up at your house on your 18th birthday.

You were about to eat dinner with your family when honking outside startled you, and when you walked out, Kaiba was standing just outside of his limo with the door open. “Get in.” You were briefly enraged before looking him in the eye and realizing he was dead serious. You bid your family an apologetic farewell before getting into the limo.

You wanted to complain, but every time you looked over to Kaiba, he stared right back at you, cold eyes beating down your defiance until you went back to looking out the window. The limo was silent for the entire ride.

Eventually you pulled up to what you discovered to be Kaiba's mansion, and before you could ask, Kaiba was getting out of the limo and walking up the steps. All you could do was trail behind him and look around in wonder.

You didn't get to explore much because he lead you directly to the dining room, where a long table was set up with plate after plate of food, many of the dishes you didn't think you could even name if you tried. One of the butlers lead you to your seat at one end of the table, while Kaiba took a seat at the other end.

Service workers lined each side of the room, before bowing and saying “Happy Birthday” in unison. You could tell Kaiba was smirking at you when your jaw dropped, but you couldn't even be properly angry at this point.

Both of you ate in silence for awhile until Kaiba finally spoke up. “Having a good birthday?” You glanced up from your plate, and the glimmer of condescending amusement in his eyes wasn't lost on you. However, you only smiled meekly.

“Yeah, actually. This is really nice, Seto. Thank you.”

The amusement faded from his eyes, and a look of confusion fell on his face. “I...well, thanks for the cards and the gift you made me.” His expression contorted a bit, as if thanking others was a foreign concept that he was unfamiliar with. It might have been, actually, the more you thought about it. Didn't he grow up rich?

You both looked down and realized that, somewhere in your passive-aggressive battle of one-upsmanship, you ended up actually doing nice, friendly, considerate things for each other. Who knows how much Kaiba had spent on this dinner tonight? Hell, money wasn't really a concern for him, but still, letting you into the mansion and riding his limo and then a fancy dinner? And damn, you'd wasted so many hours on his last gift it was kind of embarrassing in retrospect. 

The rest of dinner was spent in awkward silence, and even when the servants brought out the massive cake and sang to you, you and Kaiba were both quiet. The limo ride home had a different kind of tension to it, more of confusion and uncertainty than hostility as it had been before.

When you arrived in front of your house, you both got out, and he murmured a quiet “happy birthday” before you leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. Whether he wanted to punch you or kiss you, you weren't really sure by the face he made, but you found yourself smiling to him before waving and scurrying back into your house.

He demanded a date with you on his 19th birthday. You obliged.


End file.
